A union electrician wonders what to do with his BA in religious studies.

Nothing has changed today to make delay and destruction any more futile than it was yesterday, back when Cruz was in favor of delay and destruction.

The only thing that has changed, I think, is that Ted Cruz has more to lose than to gain by continuing to wreak havoc. He made his point and drastically increased his national profile. He built an army of deluded conservative supporters who adore him. Taking another grandstanding opportunity and pushing this Senate vote back by a day or two won’t raise his profile very much, and it will make his Republican colleagues even more furious with him than they already are.

But in the future, when wreaking havoc is once again in Cruz’s political interest, you can expect him to do so.

or: Looks like there’s a deal so what you’re about to read is pointless. Read it anyway.

So it’s been a while (again) but I’ve been urged via the ol’ social network site to post something about the shutdown. But I’d rather not. The shutdown is no more than what it was when Clinton was in office – a temper tantrum thrown by grown men and women who haven’t gotten their way. (Though let’s face it; it’s mostly men – this is the Republican party we’re talking about.) What I’m saying is, temper tantrums don’t phase me – I’ve got a toddler. What does have my wheels turnin’ these days is the possibility (likelihood?) of default. Not so much because it’s going to send the global financial system into a tailspin (though there’s that too) but because it brings into focus my favorite thing about money: it’s worthless. Yep. Worthless. All of it. The euro, the franc, the pound, the dollar bill and even gold are all worthless.

Well… worthless with one rather large caveat.

If we agree something has value then it has value. But until then it’s just a piece of paper or some shiny metal. Big deal. Now, I’d go so far as to say the whole notion of value is a farce but I’m not a sociopath. Value exists in and emerges from human interaction – be it with each other or the material world. Trust bears value by strengthening bonds between people. Creativity bears value when it consoles and inspires the creator and consumer of art. And while value does not exist inherently in any material object, it does begin to take on a life of its own once embodied in our legal and cultural infrastructure. Money of course is the most tangible and universally accepted expression of the intangible life of value. And I suspect somewhere in its bodiless nature is the real reason we can’t just mint the damn coin.

Once a certain value has been assumed for long enough it takes on a very – for lack of a better term – real realness. And we believe in it much the same way that religious believers hold true to religious tenets. That is, our behavior reflects our assumptions about the value of currency the same way believers’ behavior reflects the assumptions built in to their faith. It’s weird to say but when thought of in this way, the entire global financial system rests on faith. Sure, that faith rests upon a particular Treasury bill that can of course be backed up by the world’s largest economy and and most powerful military. (The same can be said of the Catholic Church seven or eight-hundred years ago). But if everyone stopped believing in it, you can imagine the financial shitstorm that would follow.

Or would it?

Thanks to the current make up of the House of Representatives we might find out sooner than later. But again, that’s not what I want to talk about.

So back to the coin… err… I mean The Coin.

The Treasury has the legal authority to mint a platinum gold coin for whatever value it chooses. So legally(?) the treasury could mint a trillion dollar coin, deposit it with the Federal Reserve, and fund the government. This would allow the US to meet its financial obligations and render the House’s authority over the debt ceiling moot. But it would also state rather clearly that currency of any sort is only worth what those with the power to do so determine. And while we already know to be the case, like many other cultural fictions, the idea that paper given a certain color and made of particular fiber holds some inherent value is pervasive and not easily dismissed – which is part of its strength as currency. It’s value is simply assumed. Markets ebb and flow and sometimes inflate and crash. We go to the grocery store and buy what we need. And then we check our accounts. Sometimes we’re up. Sometimes we’re down. And while the value of a certain currency may go up or down relative to other currencies, we never question that it holds value of some sort.

But to say that a belief is pervasive is not the same as saying it is essential. So I guess what I’m asking is, “Can the global economy still function if backed up by one magic coin versus a deluge of magic treasury bills?”. Would we be able to believe in the “full faith and credit of the United States” if it rests on a single piece of shiny metal?

Sure, the trillion dollar coin seems like a slight of hand but, then again, isn’t all currency? And if we all come to terms with the idea that money is little more than a tangible abstraction of real value, why wouldn’t we continue to act in good faith (pun intended) on the debts of exchange in which we’ve already engaged? Sure, as demonstrated by the GOP over the last few years (decades?) some of us would not act in good faith. Could be that they’re simply not capable. But let me draw a parallel between the high priests of finance and the high priest of… well, I guess he’s just the high priest. It might be be a bit of a stretch but that’s what I do here at the ol’ JobSite Liberal blog.

Not too long ago Pope Francis gave an interview in which he called into question the idea of absolute truth saying, “I would not speak, not even for a believer, of ‘absolute’ truth, in the sense of absolute as disconnected, lacking any relationship”. In the same interview, he stated that following one’s conscience is of greater import than belonging to a particular faith, even if doing so leads a person towards atheism or agnosticism. Pretty sophisticated thinking for the Catholic Church I’d say. What he’s essentially saying is that he trusts people to act in good faith in relation to one another without the Church’s guidance. But he’s also saying your beliefs don’t determine what happens. Now suppose that this line of thinking about absolutes is applied to the almighty dolla dolla bill instead of uh, the Almighty.

Regardless of our ability to believe that a value of a trillion dollars can be summed up in one platinum coin, if there is a legal framework for it, and more importantly, if there are a variety of institutions able to continue the circulation of capital, then POOF, the global economy is held up by one magic coin. Yes, the coin is symbolic. But the legal and cultural infrastructure that support it are not. If only the masters of the economic universe were as savvy and sophisticated as the leader of the Catholic Church.

thanks for bringing that
to our attention
she said the first time
to my response to a history text
about a famous painting
of the Battle of Quebec
that never mentioned the French
and only mentioned Indians twice,
once as nuisances, once
as the noble savage
kneeling by the dying
English general

this was during
the French and Indian war
I said, soon thousands
of French and Indian people
would be displaced, sold
into indentured servitude
my own family among them
there would be bounties
on the heads of Abenaki people
in Maine, and the English
would sow the fields of the Mohawks
with salt

thanks for bringing that up,
she said

the next book mentioned
cannibals in the Caribbean,
Indians who believed the Spanish were gods, Indians…

I’m not a girl given to bragging, but I didn’t do too poorly in law school and I’ve managed to make a rather nice living swimming with the big sharks in the grown-up pool, taking on “billions-with-a-b” cases. I pulled A’s in a lot of law school classes, but the class in which I did my absolute best was Negotiations 101.

Of course, unlike our President, I didn’t go to Harvard Law School and I was only assistant editor, not editor, of Law Review. I’ve never taught ConLaw and I’ve never held elective office. But I have had cause to wonder, more than once, if Mr. Obama may not have been busy doing something else on the day they taught Negotiating 101 at HLS.

For most of his presidency, he’s shown a disappointing tendency to engage in a practice that lawyers call “negotiating against” himself. He stakes out a position…

Nothing says courage like running on a platform of repealing the ACA in 2012, losing the Electoral college and Presidency, losing seats in the Senate, losing the popular vote in the House (though retaining control of the House with the time honored and bi-partisan process of Gerrymandering), and losing a Constitutionality challenge by a Conservative Supreme Court, only to then refuse to appoint conferees to iron out a budget 18 times (for which the Left caves and agrees to a budget number super close to what the right wanted),shut down the government, and then threaten to not raise the debt ceiling-which is the surest way to cause a global financial panic, since markets hate instability. I mean, since the only thing foreign investors find more problematic to our debt is complete instability within the Federal Government, resembling something akin to a non violent Civil War, I applaud the tenacity and courage it must take to convince yourself that you’re not fucking insane, Jesus loves you, Fox News is always right, and somehow causing instability while being in the minority is an awesome fucking idea. Bunch of fucking nimrods…

A Friday or so ago, I found myself bellied up talking family, politics, and work woes with my old buddy Discomustachio. When our mutually lapsed blogs came up I said there comes a point when screaming into the abyss feels like pissing in the wind and we immediately knew how I would start my next post. I went on, “The catharsis that comes with thinking aloud in the nameless, faceless void of cyberspace begins to lose its appeal when time to do so becomes less and less and thoughts can’t be fully thought because for the first time in seven+ years you’re no longer on a job accessible via public transit…” – I went on some more – “…so instead of blogging you’re channeling your creative energy into reasoning why you shouldn’t punch yourself in the face which…

A Friday or so ago, I found myself bellied up talking family, politics, and work woes with my old buddy Discomustachio. When our mutually lapsed blogs came up I said there comes a point when screaming into the abyss feels like pissing in the wind and we immediately knew how I would start my next post. I went on, “The catharsis that comes with thinking aloud in the nameless, faceless void of cyberspace begins to lose its appeal when time to do so becomes less and less and thoughts can’t be fully thought because for the first time in seven+ years you’re no longer on a job accessible via public transit…” – I went on some more – “…so instead of blogging you’re channeling your creative energy into reasoning why you shouldn’t punch yourself in the face which would clearly be more pleasurable than being stuck in traffic behind three buses on Western Ave because school just got out or being gridlocked on the Kennedy because, well, it’s the fucking Kennedy or driving 15.6 miles out of your way to get home in seventy minutes instead of seventy-five on a good day”. (I’m aware that makes for quite the run-on sentence, but like I said, we were bellied up and I’m embellishing a bit.)

But to be perfectly honest, I can’t blame my absence from the JobsiteLiberal solely on being stuck in traffic two-and-half to three hours a day (much that I would like to). At least some of my absence from blogging can be blamed on something entirely different but equally petty. Plain and simple, I didn’t want to be on record with all three of my regular readers saying something dumb in the wake of the bombing at the Boston Marathon. Sure that may seem contradictory to some – after all, what would a blog be that didn’t at least occasionally venture into the Realm of the Dumb? I guess I just felt there was a enough collective Dumb swirling around the social and “news” networks that I didn’t need to make my contribution to the pile. And what a steaming pile it was. But now that I’m back on a job accessible via public trans I’ve decided – at the risk of saying something dumb – that it’s time to fire up the JobsiteLiberal again – even if the only noticeable result is a urine soaked collection of denim.

So what to write about in my much anticipated return? One of the many scandal-less scandals* in the news lately?

Nope – not that either. Still feels like tragedy porn and I’m not yet recovered from the bombing’s ensuing barrage of Facebook idiocy or, for that matter, the it’s myriad conspiracy theories – Jesus Christ the fucking conspiracy theories. (On a related note, why oh why do so many people confuse conspiracy theorizing with critical thinking?)

Ok – so maybe the factory explosion on West, Texas from the same week? Seems ripe with potential extrapolations for a blog called JobsiteLiberal.

Maybe next post.

Alright, I think I’m onto something – how about, to mark my humble return to the glories of the CTA, public transportation? Seems safe enough. Boring, even, and definitely not a post that might cause a rift between friends. Sounds like a nice way to ease back in this assumed virtual identity. (After all, I don’t want to soak my jeans after just one post.)

Well that settles it – public trans it is.

Let me start by saying I love the CTA – buses and rail alike. Metra too. Pretty much any method of transit that allows me to focus on something other than getting somewhere for the entire time I’m getting there is fine by me. The Metro, the MARTA, the MTA, the CTA, the RTA, I love ’em all. The Orange Line to MDW, the Blue Line to ORD, the ‘A’ Train to JFK (now up and running again), the South Line to ATL – all good stuff. Anytime a blue collar worker such as myself can have the effective luxury of ‘a driver‘ or at bare minimum be relieved of the cost of parking or the hassle of finding a spot, I’m in.

“But wouldn’t you prefer to be on your own schedule?” you ask.

But aren’t I? It’s not our mode of transit that determines our schedules, it’s work and other obligations that determine our schedules.

“But… but… Freedom!” you insist.

Freedom indeed. I can’t imagine many behaviors more slavish (2nd definition) than subjecting myself to the unnecessary abuse of traffic jams and gas price volatility when with a little hustle and ingenuity I could be reading what I want (sci-fi as of late), browsing the web, reading the paper, digging into my RSS, zoning out entirely, or catching up on some much needed sleep all while getting where I need to go. Now what are my options when I’m driving? They’re pretty much limited to listening to the radio. But as long as I brought my walkman/discman/mp3 player/smartphone, I can do that on the train as well. What else can I do whilst driving? Punch myself in the face? Maybe. But again, I can do that on the train too though I can’t imagine I would feel the need with so many other options. And if that is my preferred extracurricular activity I’m pretty sure I could do it with that much more ferocity when I needn’t see the road before me.

Here’s my point – I’ve gone on ad nauseaum about the importance of institutions promoting the condition of freedom but let’s face it, freedom rooted in our collective institutions is slow to develop and quick to rigor. Freedom built into the space around us on the other hand is immediate and can act as a baseline for the more complicated and harder-to-quantify (try as some may) freedom that depends on a tenuous relationship of increasingly disparate institutions. And ya know, “Yay bikes!” and all that but our national infrastructure is a far cry from one that facilitates our individual agency and thus promotes freedom. Instead, a sprawling, poorly maintained highway system alongside a public transit system perpetually plagued by funding shortages limit too many of us to lead car-centric lives.

Now this may seem petty, especially with the “revelations” regarding our privacy last week. But if our concern is freedom, we shouldn’t restrain ourselves to the cyclopsian** view that the relationship between freedom and government action is a zero sum equation. We should also be asking ourselves what actions our government can take to promote freedom and individual agency. One answer that I can offer is a massive infrastructure project based in the expansion of public transportation. Stay with me here. It may feel like I’m about to go off of the proverbial tracks but, as always, I’m going somewhere – I promise.

The NBER working paper Subways, Strikes, and Slowdowns suggests that not only does public transit promote freedom by providing people with more ways of going hither and yon; it also promotes freedom by reducing the amount of time people without access to public transit spend getting themselves where the have to go. My man Paul Krugman sums up nicely: “[M]ass transit has a significant impact in reducing traffic congestion, even when it carries only a small fraction of commuters. Why? Because commuters who take mass transit are, very disproportionately, people who would otherwise be driving on the most congested routes. So even the small number of people taken off the roads has a surprisingly large effect in reducing travel delays.” In other words, when people choose public transit over private autos, not only are they free to do as they please on the train/bus/carriage but they de facto provide others with more time that they don’t have to be stuck in traffic on the fucking Kennedy in their godforsaken cars. Sounds like more freedom for all if you ask me.

Ezra Klein gets to a larger point about our national infrastructure in general which basically amounts to “Now! Now! Now!”. “Delaying either [infrastructure investment or reducing the deficit] means saddling the future with debts we declined to pay off in the present. But this is a particularly good time to invest in infrastructure and a particularly bad time to cut deep into the deficit”. Let me explain: it’s a good time to invest because, when you account for inflation, interest rates are so low that the U.S. government can borrow at negative interest rates – even with inflation as low as it has been and is projected to be. It’s a bad time to cut because the amount of money circulating through the economy is well below what it could be and taking any more out just slows things down further. So let’s borrow and spend the money now and put people back to work. As Klein also points out, “Putting them to work today would be a huge boon to the economy in a way it won’t be in, say, 10 years, when they’ll (hopefully) have work.” And let’s put ’em back to work on public transit projects where we’ll get the most bang for our buck – or freedom for our, er, finances? You get the point.

Anyway, that’s that. A little bolierplate liberal thinking on public transportation to get the wheels turnin’ again. Not as pointed as I like but at least my jeans are still mostly dry – so I got that goin’ for me. I’ll be back later this week or early next.

* I started this post before the big NSA data mining revelations last week so cut me some slack if I don’t seem to be freaking out over it. Though if you want to know where I stand, I’m probably with Andrew Sullivan who for the time being seems to have the least knee jerk reaction to the whole deal. #underwhelmed

** Cyclopsia – the tendency to apply the same intellectual framework to a variety of social and political phenomena. Individual cases yield the cognitive bias known as ‘illusory correlation’. It is contagious and is generally spread via Internet. These collective, more extreme cases which have become more common since the Iraq war are at the root of most conspiracy theories. Sufferers tend to make a point of confusing said conspiracy theories with critical thinking. More on this later.